UCLA In the News April 26, 2018

Sarah T. Roberts, a UCLA assistant professor of information studies, said: “[The disclosure] shows in no uncertain terms the great power these platforms have in terms of shaping people’s information consumption and how people formulate their points of view — and how important it is to understand the internal mechanisms at play.” (Roberts also is mentioned in a Toronto Globe and Mail Q&A on the documentary film “The Cleaners.”)

“Most of the population doesn’t know anything about electric vehicles,” said J.R. DeShazo, director of UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation. “For them to see signs in the toll lanes that allow these cars, or even to see vehicles in the lane, is beneficial for the state.”

“There’s so many different issues with it that it’s hard to know where to begin,” said Sean Hecht, a professor of environmental law and policy at UCLA. “Reading the rule, it doesn’t look like a proposal that has been strongly vetted by career lawyers. To anyone who’s looked at a lot of EPA rules, this rulemaking is extraordinary in the lack of reference to any legal authority.”

“It opens the door for a new cohort of young immigrants who have been here for many years to apply for work authorization and focus on school, securing economic stability for themselves and by extension, their families,” [UCLA’s Abel] Valenzuela said. UCLA is moving ahead as though the Trump the administration will be unable to justify its argument to the court.

By identifying a fresh target for therapy — the TB bacterium’s waxy outer jacket — the new research lays the groundwork for adding to the armamentarium against TB, said Dr. Marcus Horwitz, a UCLA infectious disease expert and longtime TB researcher…. “This one they’ve shown is important because when they knock it out, and the organism doesn’t grow well.… They’ve found one that actually does make a difference.”

[Commentary by UCLA’s Karen Sibert] Each person experiences pain differently, from an emotional perspective as well as a physical one, and responds to pain differently. That means that physicians like myself need to evaluate patients on an individual basis and find the best way to treat their pain. Today, however, doctors are under pressure to limit costs and prescribe treatments based on standardized guidelines. A major gap looms between the patient’s experience of pain and the limited “one size fits all” treatment that doctors may offer.

Dr. Ronald W. Busuttil, chairman of surgery at UCLA Medical Center and founder and chief of UCLA’s liver transplant division, called the new method “a very, very exciting new modality to revive and restore livers that might otherwise be discarded.”

“These findings provide evidence of a learning curve in surgical practice that has a meaningful impact on patients’ outcomes,” said lead researcher Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa. He’s with the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine’s division of general internal medicine and health services research, in Los Angeles. (Also: Medical Xpress)